Sara Walker will speak in a plenary session on "The Origin and Evolution of Life and Consciousness" to be held at the 2018 Science of Consciousness Conference in Tucson AZ April 2nd - 7th. More information can be found here.

'rInform', the R wrapper for the 'Inform' library, is now available for easy download using CRAN! As with the 'Inform' library, 'rInform' is structured around the concepts of: 1) discrete empirical probability distributions, which form the basis for all of the information-theoretic measures; 2) classic information-theoretic measures built upon empirical distributions; and 3) measures of information dynamics for time series. In addition to the core components, 'rInform' also provides a collection of utilities to manipulate time series.

Is biology governed by general organizing principles? New research by eLIFE members suggests that the answer is “yes”. Using a dataset that spans tens of thousands of organisms, and thousands of ecosystems, we find that life’s biochemical networks have features which are conserved across scales of biological organization (i.e. individuals, ecosystems and the biosphere). These features are distinct from random biochemical controls, and can predict whether a biochemical network belongs to an individual or ecosystem, or even a specific domain of life! These results suggest a logic to the planetary-scale organization of biochemistry, and have implications for the transition from a life-less Earth to the one we live on today! Check out the details in the newly updated bioRxiv paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/03/212118

Sara Walker delivers a talk for the Astrobiology Science Strategy for the Search for Life in the Universe on the topic of "Systems Biosignatures" as part of the National Academies ad hoc committee public sessions. The full agenda for all public sessions are available here (including remote viewing options).